The Left must shake off its torpor for the good of the country
The dust has settled on the 2024 elections, and it is time for important questions about our democracy to be asked. The Left is in disarray, and right-wing parties are gaining traction in an unprecedented way. The trend is scary and demands a counter-strategy.
To understand this shift, we must navigate the labyrinth of ideologies in South Africa, revealing both the limits and the utility of the traditional Left-Right spectrum.
Despite its shortcomings, this framework helps decode the complex messaging, visions and ethical stances of political parties, offering a valuable lens through which to understand their diverse constituents and multifaceted positions in the everevolving political landscape of the 21st century.
It is undeniable that the Right did best in the elections.
The ANC, EFF and Good are just some of the leftwing parties for which the 2024 result was disastrous, compared with 2019.
The MK Party and the IFP, centre-right to rightwing parties, had a great showing. In examining the MK Party, we see a former freedom fighter as its leader and relatively radical redistributive economic policies. This has often led to the party being wrongly categorised as left wing.
But it also wants a referendum on the death penalty, the scrapping of the constitution and the implementation of national service to instil “discipline” in young people.
The party is less than a year old, but it received 14.58% of the national vote.
The IFP, advocating nationalist and traditionalist policies, more than doubled its votes from 588,839 in 2019 to 1,307,088.
Conversely, the ANC was (rightly) punished at the polls for its disastrous tenure as the sole ruling party for the past three decades. It was commonly believed that the party would “rule until Jesus returns”, partly due to its historical link with the anti-apartheid movement as well as the enactment of progressive policies such as National Health Insurance and the Combating of Hate Speech and Hate Crimes Act.
The messianic prophecy was not to be, as the party dropped a staggering 17 percentage points and lost its absolute majority for the first time since 1994. Arguably, this was a result not of a failure of political ideology, but of incumbency. The ANC could have been right-leaning, but still lost the election, it may be said.
What, then, about Good, a party that is ideologically similar to the ANC, dropping from a 0.4% share of the vote in 2019 to 0.18%?
And what about the EFF? The party is radical in its approach, calling for the expropriation of land without compensation and free education for everyone from grade R to doctorate level, all funded by the government.
From top to bottom, its policies are in keeping with its socialist character. Though the EFF received more votes than in 2019, its share of the total dropped 1.28 percentage points.
These trends suggest that people, regardless of their education level or interest in politics, are dissatisfied with democracy.
A 2021 Afrobarometer survey revealed that 67% of respondents might prefer a dictatorship over democracy if it could provide land, security, housing and jobs. This dissatisfaction fuels voting shifts to the Right.
The government of national unity has curtailed the worst elements of the rightward trend, but this may only be temporary. With the expanded unemployment rate reaching 41.9%, the Gini inequality rating coming in at 63% and the poverty rate hitting 62.7% (using the upper middle-income poverty line), we are still a country in trouble. The South African Left is in trouble.
To recapture imaginations, the Left needs vision and collaboration. In recent years, the public broadcaster has not been effectively fulfilling its mandate of informing, educating and entertaining the public. There are no shows commissioned with the specific purpose of making South Africans aware of how they can hold the government accountable at national, provincial or local level.
There are no constitutional awareness programmes done in townships and villages by the department of justice to educate people on their rights and how to implement them.
So we should not be surprised when South Africans say they feel that the constitution does not work for them they do not know enough about it, and no effort has been done to change this. When the poorest of the poor know what the constitution can do for them, they can use it for their benefit.
There is also the issue of limited funding allocated to public awareness by the Treasury. As a country beset by social problems, every cent counts. This might mean that government departments might lack the financial resources to undertake such a Herculean task. This is where the rest of us come in public commentators, media houses, big business, civil society organisations and any other institution with the influence and resources necessary to create a network of progressive, constitutionally-minded individuals.
Imagine social media influencers bringing awareness to the small claims court as a way to resolve disputes without needing lawyers. Imagine a series of workshops held in villages where civil society organisations speak in accessible but informative language about how to hold a councillor accountable for lack of service delivery. Imagine pamphlets outlining the Bill of Rights being distributed at taxi ranks, along with the numbers of area-specific social workers, clinics, hospitals and police stations.
These solutions can form just one part of a multifaceted, years-long project that must be initiated by the Left. But they are relatively easy wins, requiring a single-mindedness that is currently missing. The truth is, if nothing changes, the rise of the Right is only going to get worse. If the Left does not engage in a co-ordinated campaign to counter this trend, South Africa could find itself in a situation from which it may never recover.
✼ Zondi is a writer and analyst